


Spirit in the Walls

by GreenVeal



Category: Happy! (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, I don’t know how I did it, Post s2 finale, brief lead in, plot pitch, probably the brevity, this is the first gen rated fic in this fandom and tbh I find that amusing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 17:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19909360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenVeal/pseuds/GreenVeal
Summary: At the end of summer, Merry gets an unwelcome guest in her home. It’s all just the kind of bullshit she’s used to these days.





	Spirit in the Walls

The garage had become oddly foreboding in the past few months. Derelict, unused children’s toys tended to have that effect. Unlit dollhouses and dusty stuffed animals had completely taken command of the storage space. Merry had meant to fix it a few months ago, but now that the dust had settled she figured it was too late to make any drastic changes.

In all honesty, Merry didn’t have the faintest clue what to do with Hailey’s old belongings. When she was given custody of the girl, she was also given full reign over everything Hailey owned: all sorts of childish things that Hailey insisted she didn’t want anymore. 

Merry would have thrown it all out, had she not been aware that Amanda wanted her to keep the glittery old heirlooms. So now she had to hold onto this crap. Briefly, she imagined herself dropping it all off at the women’s prison Amanda was currently living in, not because it was even remotely possible, but because she found the idea of dumping the semi-sentimental trash extremely appealing, especially when her fantasy involved leaving it all in the hands of the person who’d dumped it on her.

But that wasn’t Amanda’s fault, none of it was.

It was just harder to blame herself.

Merry wanted someone tangible to blame, someone who was still alive, attainable, strangleable. So it was either Amanda or herself.

And she certainly couldn’t blame Hailey.

Old coloring books and loose-leaf drawings cluttered the floor of her garage. Really, it was a fucking depressing sight. One look, and Merry could feel everything that Hailey had lost over the past few months. 

There was an innocence to the crayon drawings of blue unicorns and wishees that made Merry’s stomach twist. There were a few drawings from after the first kidnapping, a bust of Nick looking uncharacteristically clean shaven and sober, the occasional attempt at a landscape, one particularly well rendered piece involving nutcrackers shooting at ballerinas with double barrel shotguns. The drawings had stopped entirely after last Easter.

Merry hadn’t entered the garage to look at pictures, but she’d found herself captivated. Not just because of what the crude crayon sketches represented, but because of what they portrayed.

The oldest pictures were mostly of Amanda and Hailey, ponies, cats, mundane stuff as processed by the mind of a child. Moving forwards, the majority of the doodles were dominated by flying blue unicorns and wishees.

The uninformed, sugary portraits of wishees were haunting. Merry still didn’t know what the fuck the bastards were, but she couldn’t help but feel like the creatures garnered some power from the crayola effigies.

She had left it all to fester besides her old books from police academy.

Hailey hadn’t so much as asked about anything from the pile.

Amanda would definitely understand if Merry made a bonfire with a few old drawings.

She was gathering them up when she heard it. At first she thought she was bearing witness to the world’s largest paper wasp, but then she picked up on the rhythm of it. Something was tapping an intentional pattern into the walls. It kept repeating.

.-.. .- -.. -.-- / -.-. .- -. / -.--

Morse. Something was tapping in Morse.

She immediately turned her back on the dimly lit garage and darted back into the kitchen. Her pistol was on the countertop, and she grabbed it with her still blistered hand. As she squeezed the months-old wound into gunmetal, she let out a manic screech of frustration. She’d forgotten about the branding on her palm, and the reminder of it only served to force another stressor on her addled mind.

She almost dropped the pistol. Conversely, she nearly fired the pistol into the wall. Ultimately, she just screamed again.

Hailey, who was sitting on the couch, looked up from her phone in confusion. After acknowledging Merry’s presence, she looked back down. 

Merry charged the garage, gun in blistered hand.

The garage was empty, but something had been rearranged. An old textbook, one old enough to have belonged to her father, was sitting open on the floor. Open to a page on Morse.

Whatever it was, perhaps a poltergeist, it wanted her to hear it. Over the course of the past year, the realm of possibility had widened drastically- fuck if she knew, it might have been god.

The Morse started again.

.-.. .- -.. -.-- / -.-. .- -. / -.-- --- ..- / .... . .- .-. / -- . ..--..

This time she let it pass uninterrupted, if only because she didn’t have a target to shoot at.

.-.. .- -.. -.-- / -.-. .- -. / -.-- --- ..- / .... . .- .-. / -- . ..--..

It kept going, eventually Merry gave in, picking up an old drawing and deciphering the code on its back.

‘lady can you hear me?’ It was asking.

“Yes,” She regretted answering it, but curiosity had gotten the better of her. “what are you? Make yourself visible!”

Maybe she should have replied in Morse?

More tapping.

-. .. -.-. -.- / .. ... / .- .-.. .. ...- .

‘Nick is alive’

Merry had pinpointed the noise to a specific wall, a little space behind the shelf far too small for any human to fit.

She accepted it, this made perfect sense.

“Where is he?” She asked, trying to put her best foot forward when talking to the mysterious force that had taken up residence in her garage.

It spoke. “Well geez lady, if I knew I wouldn’t be trying to get help from you.” The voice sounded small, defeated, oddly cartoonish, like a character from an old Hanna Barbera show.

Her immediate response to hearing something so childish was to batten up and prepare herself for the worst. It didn’t sound like ‘a child’ it sounded like ‘an adult that would appeal to children’. Merry now associated that kind of voice with some of the worst atrocities she’d ever become aware of. She aimed her gun at the wall.

.. / -.. --- -. - / -.- -. --- .--

She didn’t bother to decipher the Morse this time.

“Just talk, tell me what you are and what you know. And don’t call me lady.”

“You can- can you hear me?” It sounded dumbfounded now, and oddly genuine in its confusion. Then came joy. “It’s Nick! He’s alive! Nick isn’t dead, I don’t know how but he’s alive and he’s in trouble.”

Merry felt like she’d been pepper sprayed.

“How do you know this-“ An extension of that question popped into her head. “What are you?”

“Well I was Nick’s ima- Nick’s informant, do you remember whenever he would just kinda know things about stuff? Or look at things that weren’t there? That was me.”

Merry had always assumed that was drugs. Of course, this made some sort of nightmare sense, which meant it was probably true. She lowered her gun from the wall, then she realized the crawl space creature probably had no way of seeing the gesture. Probably.

“You can come out now. I won’t shoot you- not until you give me a reason to.”

It made a weird noise. “I- don’t find that reassuring.”

“Show me what I’m talking to.”

“I don’t think you’ll-“

“Get out here.”

There was the sound of rummaging, cartoonish stock sound effect rummaging, and for a brief second Merry began picturing Roger Rabbit on the other side of the wall. It was moving towards the garage door, finally reaching a small crack between the fuse box and the shelf.

First, she saw something blue and furry, and she didn’t even process the rest of it until it was flying a few feet from her face.

It was the little blue unicorn from Hailey’s drawings. Chills ran up and down her spine. What the fuck was it? Why was it looking at her like that?

“Where did you come from?”

“Uhh-“ It looked at the wall, but thankfully didn’t state the obvious. Merry probably would have throttled it if it had. “A child’s imagination- Hailey’s imagination.”

Merry snapped, attempting to snatch the thing from the empty space ahead of her. “What the hell have you done to her?” She yelled.

The creature flapped around the garage madcap, hovering deceptively well on tiny wings, almost like a hummingbird, talking very quickly as it attempted to explain itself. It weaved between her fingers, and Merry wondered if it was a tangible thing. If she was hallucinating, she couldn’t have imagined herself getting so worked up.

It slipped between the doors of a dollhouse and Merry knocked it over.

She knocked a shotgun off the wall, inexplicably, it fired. It had been up there for years. Had it really been loaded the whole time? Now her ears were ringing.

The creature turned on a dime, noticing something Merry hadn’t.

Then things were still.

Hailey was standing in the doorway. She appeared almost disappointed. “Are you alright?” She queried.

Merry pointed at the winged, horned, cartoon horse.

Hailey looked at the ceiling. “Oh, can you please talk to yourself a little quieter.” She gave Merry a downright mournful look before she turned away.

For its part, the flying horse looked distraught. Lips gathered into a tight, exaggerated frown with its ears limp on its head. “You can see me, but she can’t.” It turned to face her and began to plead. “I promise, I’d never hurt her, I’m Nick’s friend. I’m just trying to find him.”

Merry ignored it for a little bit, simultaneously making sure it wasn’t a figment of her imagination and playing off its newly revealed insecurity.

It stayed by her side, still desperately trying to explain itself. Asking her questions about Nick. Oddly enough, apologizing. “Lady, I promise you, I do not want to hurt Hailey. I want to keep her safe, safe from now on. She deserves so much better than anything I can do for her- and it’s too late for me to fix- that.”

“Do you ever shut up?” She finally asked. Mostly because she was beginning to find herself feeling sorry for the sapient machination.

The odd creature smiled, like that was some sort of complement. “I just want to find my partner, once we find Nick I’ll stop talking to you.”

Merry pursed her lips, not a smile, but a social signal akin to one. Minus the happiness. “So you’re... Nick’s old tulpa? He let you look after Hailey?” Faintly, she wished she could assign him the same task.

“No- I’m Happy, I’m an imaginary friend.”

Of course he was, Merry nodded.

“At least, I used to be, It’s hard to tell nowadays.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I’m entirely imaginary anymore.”

There was a pause, like he expected her to say something. She didn’t, primarily because she had no idea how to reply to that.

“I mean, the book, the rapping on the drywall, those are all real things. I just taught myself Morse. Hailey and Nick don’t know Morse, I did that on my own.”

“Well, there you go then.” What the fuck was happening to her?

Time passed, Merry cleaned up some of the chaos she’d made while pursuing Happy around the garage. She was still going to burn the wishee drawings. “Hey, if I burn this shit, will it hurt you?”

Happy immediately puffed up and pouted, apparently offended by her words. “It’ll hurt my feelings, if that’s what you mean.” The sharp sarcasm in his voice almost made her smile, she could definitely see Nick interacting with this creature. “Look, those are Hailey’s, she-“

“She doesn’t want them anymore, and I don’t want to look at wishees whenever I have to get to my car.”

“Oh.”

Merry changed the subject for the figment’s sake, she decided that absolutely anything would be preferable to hearing him mope. “So, if you’re not completely dependent on Nick- how do you know he’s still alive? I mean, if you’re real, can you exist without him?” She had no idea how this imaginary friend thing worked, but that sounded about right.

“I don’t know- but I know he’s alive: God told me.”


End file.
